Overshadowed by the task of their favorite top 10 player Han Ying, the German women’s table tennis team reached the individual quarter-finals at the European Championships in Munich with a trio.
German champion Sabine Winter, who involuntarily profited from Hans’ lumbar spine injury, as well as European team champion Nina Mittelham and last year’s runner-up Shan Xiaona are already smashing for medals in the round of the top eight on Friday evening.
Hans’ dream of his first European title came to an abrupt end in the round of 16 duel with Winter. After the first rally and her opponent’s first point in the new edition of the DM final, the defensive strategist went to the referees, explained her task and congratulated Winter. The native Chinese touched her back and hips several times when talking to the team doctor.
Muscular injury in the back
“I’m very sorry for Ying,” Winter said in a first reaction: “I’d rather be in a quarter-final that I did something for.”
For the German Table Tennis Association (DTTB), team doctor Thomas Garn explained the unexpected end of the EM for the number one host: “Ying sustained a muscular injury on his back in the lumbar spine area while warming up in the training hall, which we then treated . After that she tried it. But she noticed that it didn’t work and then gave up. We’ll see everything else first in the MRI.”
Thanks to Hans Pech, Winter is playing against the Italian Giorgia Piccolin for a place on the podium. Mittelham meets France’s Jianan Yuan after beating Romania’s Andreea Dragoman 4-2 in the round of 16, while Shan qualified for the quarter-finals against Shao Jienji, also from China, with a 4-0 win over former European champion Elisabeta Samara from Romania.